WINNIPEG (November 7, 2017) — Steve Ambeau, a respected marketing professional with fresh international and North American experience and a global perspective on the fast-changing digital marketing landscape, has joined DMT Development Systems Group Inc., the company has announced.

Ambeau was appointed vice president, marketing, and assumed his new role in the Winnipeg office on November 1, 2017. He will be responsible for marketing DMT’s highly successful lead management systems to the global auto industry and opening new industry sectors as part of the company’s next phase of growth.

Ambeau joins DMT from BMW Group in Munich, Germany, where he was Global Head of Digital Marketing for the MINI brand. Prior to that, he was head of marketing for the MINI brand at BMW Group Canada.

Moving from consumer marketing to business-to-business marketing will be a smooth transition based on the successful strategies developed for manufacturers, their national sales organizations and dealers, Ambeau says.

“The focus on the end customer is the same,” he says. “In this case, we’re marketing best-in-class services and tools that help businesses create a stronger overall customer experience.”

“There are always two components to any marketing appeal: the rational and the emotional,” Ambeau adds. “It can be one or the other — or both. With B2B marketing, the emphasis is typically weighted toward the rational, value-based appeal. I understand how manufacturers are re-focusing their budgets toward more personalized communications, data management, analytics and the whole range of management issues they confront in adopting effective CRM practices.”

The auto industry’s movement to “one-to-one personalization” through CRM has been propelled by DMT’s widely-adopted RAPID! Response and DIGITAL! Interview lead management systems, Ambeau says. While the auto industry continues to focus heavily on lead management and ensuring a better customer experience, car companies — and many other industries — still have work to do to catch up to the rapid pace of change and growing consumer demands. That points to vast new markets beyond auto retailing, Ambeau suggests.

“So much of Steve’s brilliant career has been spent in digital marketing that its hard to imagine anyone better suited to the task of expanding our global reach,” says Glen Demetrioff, president and chief executive of DMT. “He’s been in the position of having to manage the most fundamental change in automobile marketing in decades. He’s been in the position of our clients who have to re-invent auto marketing for a new era. No one understands the challenges better.”

Ambeau’s career touched agency work and the financial services sector before he joined BMW in 2011. He earned his BA (Business Marketing/Communications) at Loras College in Iowa and is in the midst of his MBA.

For more than 21 years, DMT has provided the global automotive and the power equipment industry with cutting-edge SaaS software and systems focused on improving lead generation and customer relationship management utilizing multiple communication channels for fast and thorough responses to internet inquiries. DMT serves more than 2,200 clients in more than 20 languages in nearly 30 countries on three continents. A privately held company, DMT is headquartered on the University of Manitoba campus in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with offices and 225 employees in Toronto, Ontario, Paris, France, London, U.K. and Dallas, Texas.